ain Captain Strawn looked uncomfortable. "But we haven't
been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"I'd give a good deal to know which of those two suggested that it would
be a good idea to get married the first thing this morning," Dundee
mused aloud, as he put down the second extra which _The Hamilton Morning
News_ had had occasion to issue that Thursday.

It was two o'clock, and the district attorney's "special investigator"
sat across the desk from Captain Strawn, in his former chief's office at
Police Headquarters.

The first extra had screamed in its biggest head type: SECOND BRIDGE
DUMMY MURDER! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn's comforting
theory that Dexter Sprague's erstwhile friends had again been made the
victims of a New York gunman's fiendish cleverness in committing his
murders under circumstances which would inevitably involve Hamilton's
most highly respected and socially prominent citizens in the police
investigation.

But the second extra had a more romantic streamer headline: HAMMOND
WEDDING DELAYS MURDER QUIZ.

The story beneath a series of smaller headlines began:

"At the very moment--9:05 o'clock this morning--when Celia Hunt, maid in
the Tracey Miles home in the Brentwood district of Hamilton, was
screaming the news of her discovery of the dead body of Dexter Sprague,
New York motion picture director, in what is known as the 'trophy room,'
Miss Polly Beale and Mr. Clive Hammond were applying for a marriage
license in the Municipal Building.

"At 9:30, when Miss Beale and Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in
the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of which both bride and
groom have been members since childhood, Captain John Strawn of the
Homicide Squad was listening to Tracey Miles' account of the strange
disappearance of Dexter Sprague last night from an impromptu bridge
game, after he had announced his intention of taking advantage of the
fact that he was 'dummy' to telephone for a taxi.

"And at 10 o'clock, when the new Mrs. Hammond called her home to break
the news of her marriage to her aunt, Mrs. Amelia Beale, the bride was
in turn acquainted with the news of Sprague's murder and the fact that
both she and her husband were wanted at the Miles home for questioning
by the police, since both had been guests of Mr. and Mrs. Miles last
night, although Mr. Hammond did not arrive until about 11 o'clock."

There followed a re